Cohesity
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Data management, Cybersecurity, Disaster recovery |
| Founded | June 2013 |
| Founder | Mohit Aron |
| Headquarters | San Jose , United States |
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people | Sanjay Poonen (CEO) |
| Products | DataProtect, SmartFiles, Helios, FortKnox, DataHawk |
Number of employees | 1500 (2023) |
| Website | www |
Cohesity, Inc. is a privately owned American technology firm based in San Jose, California, with additional offices located in India and Ireland. The company specializes in creating software solutions that assist IT teams in backing up, managing, and analyzing data spanning various systems and cloud platforms. Its suite of products includes DataProtect, SmartFiles, Helios, FortKnox, and DataHawk, which offer features such as ransomware defense, Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS), and SaaS lifecycle management.
Under the leadership of CEO Sanjay Poonen, Cohesity operates within the sectors of data management, cybersecurity, and disaster recovery. As of 2023, the workforce comprises roughly 1,500 employees, with reported revenues reaching $450 million. The company’s strategy centers on delivering integrated data management solutions designed to combat extensive data fragmentation, catering primarily to enterprises aiming for efficient backup processes and seamless cloud integration.
History
Established in June 2013 by Mohit Aron, who previously co-founded the storage company Nutanix, Cohesity initially operated in stealth mode while securing $15 million in Series A financing. The company emerged publicly in June 2015 with a platform focused on consolidating and managing secondary data through offerings like DataPlatform and DataProtect. By this time, Cohesity had accumulated $70 million via Series A and B funding rounds.
In 2016, the firm introduced second-generation products and broadened its data protection capabilities to include physical servers. Midway through that year, investments from Google Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures, and Sequoia Capital helped raise an additional $70 million. In April 2017, a $90 million Series C round led by GV and Sequoia Capital elevated total funding to $160 million. By November 2017, the employee count had grown to 300.
June 2018 marked a significant milestone when Cohesity secured $250 million in Series D funding led by SoftBank Vision Fund and unveiled Helios, a SaaS-based management console. The following year saw the launch of an online MarketPlace for DataPlatform applications and the company’s first acquisition: Imanis Data, a specialist in NoSQL data protection. In 2019, Cohesity transitioned its revenue focus toward software sales over hardware backup appliances.
The company maintained its expansion momentum with a $250 million Series E round in 2020, culminating in total capital raised of $660 million by December 2021. That same month, Cohesity filed for an initial public offering.
In April 2022, Cohesity formed a partnership with Rackspace Technology to deliver multi-cloud managed backup and recovery services powered by Cohesity DataProtect. By August 2022, Sanjay Poonen had taken over as CEO and President from Mohit Aron.
In December 2024, Cohesity finalized its acquisition of Veritas Technologies from The Carlyle Group for $3 billion. This merger created an entity valued near $7 billion and substantially enhanced Cohesity’s portfolio and market presence within data management and security sectors.
Products
Cohesity develops software aimed at unifying and streamlining data management processes while incorporating analytical functionalities. Its offerings tackle widespread data fragmentation across diverse systems and cloud environments with an emphasis on secure backup solutions tailored for enterprise use.
DataPlatform
Cohesity’s premier offering, DataPlatform, is a hyperconverged software solution that allows organizations to unify various workloads—such as backups, archives, testing and development, and analytics—onto a single cloud-native infrastructure. This platform is compatible with both physical hardware and virtual environments.
Running on DataPlatform, the backup software DataProtect introduced the Pegasus v6.3 version in 2019, which incorporates anti-ransomware features utilizing machine learning-driven anomaly detection.
The acquisition of Imanis Data in 2019 broadened Cohesity’s backup capabilities to include NoSQL databases like MongoDB, Cassandra, Couchbase, HBase, as well as Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) storage.
Cohesity’s Helios, a SaaS-based management interface, offers a centralized dashboard that oversees DataPlatform deployments across local sites, remote locations, on-premises infrastructure, and public cloud environments. It employs artificial intelligence to aid in data recovery processes. Notable enterprises such as Palo Alto Networks utilize Helios.
Through the MarketPlace, users can acquire both Cohesity and third-party applications compatible with DataPlatform. Furthermore, developers have access to an SDK for creating tailored applications on this platform.
Disaster Recovery as-a-Service
In 2019, Cohesity introduced Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS), which allows clients to leverage Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a failover site during disaster events. By October 2020, the company expanded its cloud protection suite by launching DataProtect SaaS on the AWS cloud.
The Security Advisor tool enhances cybersecurity by detecting malware vulnerabilities within systems. In 2021, Cohesity unveiled SiteContinuity, a disaster recovery offering, alongside DataGovern, a solution centered on data security and compliance management.
May 2022 saw the release of FortKnox, a SaaS product providing data isolation and restoration through an air-gapped digital vault hosted on AWS, designed to safeguard user information against ransomware and cyber threats. By June 2022, both DataProtect and FortKnox became accessible to customers in Southeast Asia, supporting Cohesity’s global expansion and strengthening its presence in emerging markets.